There's something exciting and romantic about the lifestyle of majororganized crime, as manifested by the success of mob movies suchas The Godfather. The enticement of easy money, lots of power, andliving on the edge of the law has spawned many successful videogames.

I'm not sure any of them rival the power of Mafia Wars by Zynga inrecent times. The explosion of social networking websites,specifically Myspace and Facebook has made it possible for manysoftware companies to make a fortune by creating free, addictivegames that people share with one another on these sites.If you aren't already playing "Mafia Wars" then you are missing outon a free way to have a lot of fun and make a lot of friends. It doesn'tcost a dime to play and once you're involved in the game you'll enjoyit so much you won't ever want to stop.

I personally prefer playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. I will shortlybe creating a new Facebook account for us all to join mafias togetherand play the game from the start again.

Growing Your Mafia

Initially, this seems like the hardest part unless you're reallyexperienced with these kinds of games or 'applications' on socialnetworking sites. To go out and recruit people into your mafiaquickly and successfully, follow the steps here and your mafia willbe huge in no time.

Method #1) Invite all your existing network friends to play. Thisis easy because the application has a built-in feature to do this,however, it's limited because the application needs to cooperatewith the social network website and not spam.

To overcome the limitations imposed by the built-in feature of theapplication, you need to get your recruiting link and go out andinvite your friends individually. This will actually bring MORE ofyour friends into your mafia than by using the automated features.Take a minute and craft your personalized invitation message foryour friends. Tell them that even if they don't want to play, youbenefit by them simply accepting the invitation. You want yourmafia to be huge in numbers so even the people who never useapplications but accept to be in your mafia will speed the gamealong for you. Some of the least expected friends can turn into yourstrongest mafia bosses so invite everybody.

Send your personalized invitation via the private message feature.Don't try to send to everybody too fast because you don't wantMyspace or Facebook to kick in its anti-spam defenses. Send amessage every few minutes until you've invited your best friends.Try to pick the most active members first as they'll be most likely toaccept and play the game with you.

Method #2) Use forums to recruit super playersIn Mafia Wars, you need at least six players in your mafia who aretotally addicted to the game and will reach the higher levels. Theseare the players you want to put into your 'top mafia' by promotingthem to be your wheelman, your safecracker, etc. When youpromote players who are further along in the game, you get biggerrewards in jobs and fights.

To find these people, go to the "Apps" directory on Facebook.http://www.facebook.com/apps/In the Search Applications box, enter 'Mafia Wars'. The first andbest one is #1 by Zynga, the one we're talking about in this report.Go ahead and click it. It will take you to the application's home page.What's interesting is that there is a discussion board on this page.It's where you'll see people asking and answering questions aboutthe game. It's a good place to hang out if you have doubts, but thebest part is that this is where players post to recruit members intotheir mafia.

What you do is add all of these people who are posting for moremafia members to your own mafia. You add them as a friend and Irecommend you include a personal message at the time ofadding saying something like "for mafia wars" or just paste yourrecruiting link in there so they know you're not a stalker and wantto play the game with them. There's no limit to how much you cando this, and it's the fastest way to build a supercharged mafia.

It's important to recruit early in the game because the best way toget cash flow going (in order to get stronger weapons and vehicles)is to buy "Mafia Mike's" property. It's cheap and offers awesomecash flow. You need it in order to get those Tommy Guns necessaryfor completing jobs and defending yourself. Recruit like crazy andyour mafia will be gigantic. The limit at the time of this writing is500, but you can get there quickly by using this forum recruitingtactic ALONE!!!

Do both adding people from the forum and post your own little adfor recruiting. You can also post in the 'Review' section but tellpeople to add you as a friend to invite to the game since the reviewsection doesn't allow you to post your recruiting link. The commentsection does though so feel free to post it there at least once a day,maybe even once every four or five hours even since there are somany postings there.

Method #3) Use other social sites to recruit existing players.If you're playing on Myspace, go to Facebook to recruit players intoyour Myspace mafia, and if you're playing on Facebook, look for theplayers on Myspace to recruit into your Facebook mafia. The appalso runs on Yahoo, so look for players using the Yahoo version.One thing you can do is create a free blog about your personal'mafia' experiences. Go to http://blogger.com and create a blogdedicated exclusively to your mafia. Write on it daily at first, and besure to include 'keywords' related to mafia wars that will help otherplayers find your blog. You should customize your blog sidebar todisplay your recruiting link prominently.

If you don't know what to blog about, just Google some info aboutmafia wars and you'll be able to get ideas.DIRTY TRICK: Write up a blog post about "Mafia Wars Cheats" andtell people they'll get a bonus by adding you to their mafia. I've seenother people doing this and while they aren't winning any realfriends, they sure have big mafias…

I've seen similar methods using video sites like YouTube andMetacafe as well. These are people who promise players a hiddenbonus if they add such-and-such person to their mafia. It's not veryhonest unless you give some of your collection items to thesepeople, in which case it's completely honest and I encourage you tomake those kinds of promises. Otherwise, just make Mafia WarsCheat Secrets or something like that the title of your video to getviews but just refer people to your blog or recruiting link.

You can also use Twitter to recruit on automatic pilot. What you dois go to http://tweetlater.com and create a free account. You willalso already need an active Twitter account to use this. What you dois once you've created your account, go to "Manage My ScheduledTweets and Twitter Account Automation." Click the box that says"Auto Welcome" and enter either your blogger blog or your mafiarecruiting link into the message box.

It can only be 120 characters soconsider a URL shortening site like http://tinyurl.com to make therecruiting URL small enough that you can still add a little blurb oftext inviting. Remind people they have to add you as a friend too!

You can do searches on Twitter so search for mafia wars and startadding all the people who have anything to say about it. TweetLaterwill automatically send your recruiting message to the people thatfollow you back. You can do this to hundreds of Twitter users eachday, but don't go overboard because Twitter also has anti-spammeasures built-in to prevent users from abusing the service. Createmultiple Twitter accounts if you want, you only need oneTweetLater account for multiple Twitter accounts though.